Brecca Sylen
Brecca Sylen is an experienced thief, con-artist, and assassin active in the Ostberg Valley Chain. A former member of the Thieves' Guild in Claykeep, he is currently employed with the Harlowe Traveling Adventure Brokerage. However, this alliance is often strained due to his tumultuous relationship with Phillippe Marienburg. Although originally coerced into joining the Bokerage by a former associate from the Guild, Ernold Adrienszen, Brecca has since found that adventuring with the company reaps pleasing rewards for its risks. He has also formed somewhat of an attachment to the party's young druid, Wren, and it's possible that this loyalty—as well as a frustrated sense of responsibility toward keeping Phillippe in check—are the primary factors obstructing his resignation from the party. History Early Life Brecca (full name Brecca Parthenius Sylen) was born ninety-six years prior to the present canon in High Ostberg to Parth and Tariel Sylen. His parents—both full-blooded elves —ran a small leathersmithing business in the merchant quarter of the city, where Brecca enjoyed a simple but relatively happy childhood. High Ostberg at that time was closely affiliated with the Church of Thule, an aggressive patriarchical religious cult which had significant influence over legislation. Parth and Tariel were casually aligned with other gods, but their modest caste allowed them to escape the Church's attention. Brecca was generally oblivious to the socio-political goings on of the city, until his father was drafted into one of the Church's extravagant holy wars. His mother worked very hard to maintain the family shop when Parth was inevitably killed in action. Brecca was fourteen at this time, and although he'd begun apprenticing under his father at twelve, he didn't yet have the skills to pick up the slack. Tariel, meanwhile, openly slandered the Church for Parth's destruction. The Sylens were consequently ostracized and the business failed. When the compensation ran out the two of them fell into poverty. Tariel resigned herself to completing small mending and alteration jobs from home, while Brecca looked for work in the city. His youth, lack of education, and family reputation made this very difficult for him, and he was unable to keep anything for long when the latter caught up with him. He took to pickpocketing and thieving in the streets in the downtime, becoming quite skilled with sleights of hand. The Assassination of Cornelio Shalt Brecca and Tariel's living conditions at this time were extremely poor. Tariel eventually fell sick, and Brecca did his best to provide for both of them. He tried everything to help her recover; he'd made some eccentric friends hanging around the slums pawning stolen goods, and was able to procure unusual medicines this way. Nothing worked, however, and nothing he did brought him any closer to affording the real treatment she needed. When her health deteriorated enough, a thirteen-year-old working girl named Claren with whom Brecca had become close suggested he consider streetwalking. Brecca was able to make good money this way, as the services of full-blooded elves were somewhat novel at the street level. He was young, too, at sixteen, and fortunately (perhaps unfortunately) for him, quite beautiful. After several months at this, he found himself propositioned by an Archbishop by the name of Cornelio Shalt. Brecca, being ignorant of the politics of High Ostberg, was unaware of the extent of the man's importance at the time. He was more determined than ever to see his mother well, and saw this as an opportunity to appeal to the Church for help. He accompanied the man to a private room, convinced Cornelio would take pity on him. The bishop seemed moved by his story, promising to visit with Tariel and to see what could be done. The encounter, however, turned violent the instant they were alone. Brecca came to in an unfamiliar part of town, badly injured and presumably left for dead. The incident shook him deeply, but he continued working, now much more cautiously. Unfortunately by the time he amassed sufficient funding, Tariel was beyond recovery. When she died something in Brecca changed. He swore to himself that he'd rise above the squalor they'd lived in, that he'd never again be so helpless. He alone would define his own destiny; he would be responsible for his own happiness, and he'd seize it by any means necessary. Societal limitations and self-pity would no longer hold him back. Brecca bided his time, and at the age of nineteen, with some careful social maneuvering found his way back into Cornelio's bed. This time he was prepared; he killed the man, ransacked his quarters for every valuable he could carry, and fled the city. He headed west, away from the Church's influence, only narrowly evading arrest on several occasions. He realized very quickly that he'd left a larger mess behind him than he'd thought. Cornelio's death—particularly the insinuating circumstances under which he'd been found, naked and bludgeoned to death with one candlestick, another lodged somewhere unpleasant—had caused an impressive scandal, and the Church was scrambling for someone to hold accountable. He kept his head down, hustling his way toward Claykeep, where he'd heard rumors of a Thieves' Guild he hoped might take him in. Education and Apprenticeship He was intercepted before he could reach the city by a man named Emir Kovalgo, a relevant assassin from High Ostberg who'd made a very successful career of exploiting the conflicts between competing political groups and figures. Emir found Cornelio's death very amusing and and had taken on the task of tracking his murderer with interest. Emir's connections had made him well aware of Cornelio's unsavory habits, and he caught up with Brecca easily after an interview with several of Brecca's "coworkers." He watched Brecca for a day or so, waiting for an appropriate window but also curious, and in the end concluded that Brecca was much more interesting alive than dead. Emir was human, in his fifties, and growing bored with his life. He had been planning his retirement for some time, but had as of yet been too proud to let his skills and talents disappear with him. Brecca was intriguing—a reckless, illiterate whore who'd singlehandedly made an utter disgrace of the Archbishop of High Ostberg, panicked the government, outraged half the citizens and stirred excitement in the rest. He noted potential in Brecca—for an idiot, the boy was exceptionally clever. And he had something very important: a willingness to make sacrifices for his ends that others might pale at. All he needed was the proper guidance. Brecca accepted Emir's offer—there seemed little choice, with his life in the man's hands—and the two completed the journey to Claykeep together. Brecca quickly came to understand that Emir was first and foremost an actor. He played the part of the empty-headed hired muscle, but was a fantastically shrewd and cunning man who was very good at sowing discord among the people he worked for. He had kept himself in business for a long time in High Ostberg, playing every side of every quiet war, discreetly stoking tensions and inciting conflict, never slipping character. He schooled Brecca well in this, who would later take the act further, working the zeal of smaller religious groups and the petty affairs between wealthy nobles to his advantage. Brecca learned rapidly that shutting his mouth and batting his eyes stupidly afforded him more protection than any weapon or intimidating reputation. Emir taught him how to maintain an ever-shifting facade of masks and personas, and how to use the superstitions and bigotry of others against them. A target would assume Brecca was an idiot, and he was to do everything he could to strengthen that assumption. An idiot was more likely to be treated like furniture than a person—tongues would loosen and caution would disintegrate. Brecca became very, very good at this. So much so that the frivolous, decadent whore became an almost permanent shell. Meanwhile, as his earnings began to amass, Brecca began employing a tutor. Emir taught him to wield crossbows and blades, to pick locks and disarm traps, to intimidate and interrogate, to lie and read the truth in others. In the daytime, however, Brecca learned to read and write, educated himself in subjects such as arithmetic, literature, philosophy, and etiquette. Emir's extensive experience with nobles was particularly helpful with the last. Emir started small with him, recognizing in Brecca a creative and ambitious mind, similar to his own—a mind that could not only assimilate Emir's methods but expand upon them. He let Brecca take the lead, functioning as the angry pimp or lover in Brecca's badger games, aiding him in thefts, instructing him in whichever skills were necessary. He was interested in seeing what kind of path Brecca would forge if given the training and the opportunity, and functioned more as an enabler or a sponser than a teacher. They worked Claykeep first, keeping out of the way of the Thieves' Guild and using the anonymity of a large city to their advantage, then moved on once they felt they had exhausted this to the point where it might be dangerous to continue. They pinballed from town to town, running scams and pulling heists, returning to larger cities when safe. Emir and Brecca ran together for five years, blazing their way through the Ostberg Valley Chain in a bloody whirlwind of smoke and mirrors. They played as extravagantly as they worked, and soon earned themselves a quite a reputation for indulgence. The last three years of their time together were somewhat quieter, as they were spent training in Emir's speciality—high society assassination. Emir vanished without notice one morning shortly after Brecca's twenty-fifth birthday. Brecca took this as a kind of graduation, a statement that he had learned all he could from the man, and swallowed any sense of abandonment he might had had about it. He continued on without Emir, confident in his own talent, experimenting, expanding his skills, and enjoying the network of contacts Emir had left behind. Past Exploits and Acquaintances In his late twenties, Brecca found himself in the company of two tieflings, fraternal twin sisters who hailed from an extremely powerful and prestigious family of human-demon hybrids in a faraway land. Their names were Naully and Shax, and they'd been ordinary clients up until they slaughtered every other working boy and girl in the room, sparing Brecca alone for mysterious (and possibly capricious) reasons. Naully was leading a party of adventurers in the area and decided to drag Brecca along with them, clearly amused by his discomfort and the fact that the volatile Shax had opted not to eat him. Her good humor was compounded by the fact that the party included a forty-something war veteran, Atlas, whom Brecca had robbed the night before during a drinking contest with Shax (which Atlas miserably lost). While he became something of a punching bag for the other party members due to his nervousness around the tieflings and his inexperience in working with others, he did get along with one of the company—a wealthy 12-year-old wizarding prodigy by the name of Asher, also a full-blooded elf. Asher was well-educated, witty, and spectacularly full of himself, and the two enjoyed each other's conversation. The friendship, however, never developed beyond a businesslike mutual tolerance for each other above the party's cruder members. Shax, though, took a very strong interest in Brecca, who was similarly fascinated by her. He made several escape attempts only to meet with her wrath, and the two entered into a turbulent love-hate affair that escalated out of control very quickly. Conditioned from birth to succeed her father as a savage demon warlord, Shax was erratic and explosively emotional, and her desire for mass destruction coupled with the intensity of her feelings for him caused Brecca to finally flee the company once and for all. Adventures Quotes "Yes. An innocent boy. Serving me 'wine' and 'cheeses.'" "I'm gonna confiscate his giant sword. I'm gonna sheath it." Dalton: "Tomorrow's for business, tonight is for life!" Brecca: "(I consider tonight for business, too)." "'Hateful darkness.' That's nothing new." "There's always something in my mouth." "I'm so sick of being unconscious." "Is anyone fireproof? PHILIPPE!" Category:Player Characters Category:Thieves